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Undermanned yet pushing the pedal to the metal all night long, Magnolia on Wednesday took the lead in its best-of-seven PBA Philippine Cup Final Four series with NLEX.
And the Hotshots will go into what their coach says will be a “dogfight” carrying a lot of momentum.
Ian Sangalang played double time and shone the brightest among the Hotshots’ big men, and Jio Jalalon played great on both ends in leading Magnolia to a 106-99 victory at Smart Araneta Coliseum as the Hotshots put themselves in a position to deal NLEX a virtual killer blow on Friday.
“Game 4 will be a dogfight because it will be a do-or-die game for NLEX,” coach Chito Victolero said. “And that means we have to sustain what we have been doing (in the last two games).”
Jalalon, who is being buoyed by late night text messages from Victolero about carving his niche in the league, scored 25 points while playing defense on NLEX super rookie Kiefer Ravena, while Sangalang finished with 24 in almost 38 minutes of extended playing time because of the injury to Marc Pingris.
“He knows that he has to step up and he knows that he needs to play more minutes because of Pingris’ absence,” Victolero said of Sangalang, his offensive revelation in this best-of-seven series.
Victolero didn’t need to get heavy offensive contribution from Paul Lee, but got 17 big points from Rome dela Rosa.
The Road Warriors did themselves in with spotty free-throw shooting in the fourth and horrendous execution in the stretch, losing for the second straight game despite having a clear shot at a win going into the final seven minutes.
Ravena still went on to topscore with 20 points and Kevin Alas had 15 for the Road Warriors, who would really need to win the 7 p.m. game Friday to be able to entertain thoughts of making a title series for the first time in their franchise history.
“We are thankful that we are leading the series,” Victolero went on. “But we need four wins to make the Finals. There’s still a lot of work to be done.”
Meanwhile, San Miguel power forward Arwind Santos was fined P20,000 for statements detrimental to the league. Santos criticized officiating after a 95-87 Game 3 loss. He was also fined P5,000 for incurring a flagrant foul penalty 1.